“No,” said Mr. Djukanovic. “Because the house was in the flood place we could not have insurance. So it is just lost. Gone. Our house in America.”
“Well, I don’t think that’s fair,” I said. “Didn’t the county condemn it? If they do that, I should think they’ll have to give you something for it.”
“Something, perhaps, but not enough for a new house.”
“Well, you’re welcome to stay here just as long as you’d like,” I said.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Djukanovic, “but we’ll go as soon as we can. And live in a trailer.”
“Well, you have a home here,” I said. “There’s no need for that. It isn’t right, my husband and me all alone in this big house.”
“You have no children?” Mr. Djukanovic asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Or no. We had a daughter but we don’t have her anymore. Well, in our memories we do, of course, but not—not here.”
“She is dead?” asked Mr. Djukanovic.
“Yes,” I said. “Her name was Alice.”
“Like in Wonderland,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Exactly like that.”
Of course Robert had sneaked down into the basement. I brought him a mug of coffee and a powdered-sugar doughnut. He sat at his worktable looking dejectedly at his belts. He had somewhat optimistically bought three hundred plain leather belts, which he intended to personalize and decorate with his leather-tooling kit and then sell on his website, but so far he had sold only three, and those were to people at church and only because of the Christmas Craftmart (another idea of Reverend Judy’s, come to think of it, with half of his proceeds going to the church).
“You can’t hide down here forever, you know,” I said. I cleared a place on the table and put down the coffee and doughnut.
“I’m not hiding,” said Robert. “This is my house. You can’t hide in your own house.”
“Oh, I think you can hide in any house,” I said, but I didn’t want to argue about it. “Are you warm enough down here?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Would you like me to bring down the space heater?”
“No,” he said.
He broke the doughnut in half, and then into quarters, and dunked one of the quarters into the coffee and then ate it. He brushed some of the powdered sugar that had come loose onto the floor. I was aware of him wanting me to go, to leave him alone, but something kept me standing there beside him. Since we moved the washer and dryer up into the breezeway (it really isn’t a breezeway anymore since it was winterized), I hardly ever go down into the basement. One half of the basement—the dark side—was full of all the things we kept when we sold Charlie and Alice’s house. It isn’t very much, most of the things we donated to Goodwill (they will come and clean a house out; they’ll take everything, anything), but there were some things I just couldn’t bear ending up at Goodwill or in some unknown person’s house.
“What are we going to do with all of that?” I asked.
“What?” Robert asked. He dunked another piece of doughnut into his coffee.
“That,” I said, and nodded toward the dark part of the basement. “Alice’s things. Alice’s and Charlie’s and Laila’s things.”
“I don’t know,” said Robert. “You’re the one who wanted to keep them.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s true.”
“It’s ridiculous,” said Robert.
“Yes,” I said. “You’re probably right.”
“Ridiculous,” Robert said again, but this time he said it gently.
After a moment he picked up an awl or something and banged it with a hammer onto a belt, but I knew he was only pretending. He’d probably ruin the belt, but it didn’t matter, did it, because he had 296 more.
“I just had a nice chat with Mr. Djukanovic,” I said.
Robert said nothing, but continued to randomly (it seemed to me) tool the belt. Surely you had to draw some design on it first and not just whack away at it like a madman?
“They didn’t have insurance on their house,” I said. “On account of it being in a flood zone. So they won’t get any insurance money. And what will they do? How will they buy another house?”
“How should I know?” Robert said. “They should never have bought that one in the first place. You don’t buy a house in a flood zone.”
“Some people do.”
“Yes, some crazy people.”
“I don’t think the Djukanovics are crazy,” I said. “It was the only house they could afford.”
Robert said nothing, just tooled some more.
“Do you wish they weren’t here?” I asked. “Do you wish they would go away?”
“Of course I do,” said Robert. “I wish nothing bad ever happened to anyone.”
“But it does,” I said.
“I know it does,” said Robert.
“So we should help them,” I said. “Shouldn’t we help them?”
“Yes,” said Robert. “We should help them. We are helping them.”
“Maybe we can give them this house,” I said. “Maybe we should.”
“And where will we go?”
“I don’t know,” I said. And I didn’t. I couldn’t picture us living anywhere else, not in another house, or an apartment, or a retirement home. But it did seem wrong, somehow, that we, and not the Djukanovics, should have this house. It seemed almost a crime.
“Isn’t that what good Christians do?” I asked. “Take the coat off your own back and give it to someone who needs it?”
“Well, maybe a coat, because you can buy another coat. But not a house.”
“It shouldn’t matter,” I said. “It’s the principle.”
Robert sighed. “Then give them our house,” he said. “Give the Djukanovics our house. And we’ll go live in the street. Is that what you want?”
“No,” I said. “No. Of course not.”
Robert said nothing. I wanted to say something nice about the belt, something encouraging, but it really did look ruined, so what could I say?
“Would you like some more coffee?” I asked. “Another doughnut?”
“No, thank you,” said Robert.
I stood there for a moment, and then Robert picked up his tools and attacked the belt again, and I went upstairs.
It turned out that both Mr. and Mrs. Djukanovic worked at Odd Lot Warehouse & Liquors but because they had missed work the day of the flood, they were suspended and couldn’t work again for a week. This didn’t make much sense to me, but then it has been such a long time since I had a job (I used to work in the gift department at Downer’s Pharmacy during the Christmas season, but it closed when the CVS arrived, and that must have been at least twenty years ago), so I don’t really know what the rules are nowadays. I did suggest to Mr. Djukanovic that perhaps if he explained about the flood and their house to the Odd Lot, explained that it was an act of God, they might make an exception in his case, but he told me he had already done that. I thought about calling Reverend Judy and asking her to look into it, but Robert told me it was none of my business and to stay out of it. Despite our tender moment in bed the first night that the Djukanovics arrived, Robert had become rather snippy with me, but I suppose it was just the strain of having strangers in the house and him spending too much time down in the basement.
I was trying to be especially friendly and kind to Mrs. Djukanovic because I felt so bad about her feeling ashamed, but it was difficult to do much of anything since she always scurried away when she saw me and didn’t speak English. So I just tried to be extra nice to Mr. Djukanovic and Wanda. I went down into the dark part of the basement and found Laila’s Barbie Dreamhouse and her huge collection of Barbies. They were all a little moldy, but I wiped everything down with Lysol and then left them in the den, and Wanda did seem to enjoy playing with the Dreamhouse, although she ignored all of Laila’s fully intact Barbies and only played with her own armless doll. It all ended rather badly, though, because Wanda liked to reenact the flood
and make the house collapse and by smashing it so often that it finally fell apart. That was fine with me, I had no use for it of course, but Mrs. Djukanovic was terribly upset about it and actually smacked Wanda, which shocked and upset me although I know in some cultures it’s perfectly all right for parents to hit their children. (I never laid a finger on Alice; in fact all you had to do was give her a stern look and she’d be in tears.) So we had to throw the Dreamhouse out in the garbage, and I tried to give all the Barbies and their clothes and furniture and junk to Wanda, but Mrs. Djukanovic wouldn’t let her have any of it, and she even took Wanda’s own handicapped Barbie away for a day or two as a punishment. It all just seemed so mean and terribly unfair to me.
Robert said if I was going to get upset about every little thing that happened with the Djukanovics, they should leave, and if I cried one more time he would throw them all out, so after that I tried to look on the bright side of everything and keep my spirits up, and I made sure I cried only when I was alone.
The Djukanovics stayed with us for eight days, and then the emergency trailers arrived and were parked in the outfield behind the high school even though the baseball season was about to begin, but apparently no one thought about that. I’m surprised that it occurred to me, but it’s the first thing I thought of when I saw them there, all lined up as if the circus had come to town. Alice used to play on the softball team and I did enjoy going to all the home games. The girls looked so pretty in their white uniforms, and the green grass and sunny afternoons. Alice was the pitcher.
I wasn’t home the morning the Djukanovics moved into their trailer because it was a Wednesday, and I volunteer at the hospitality shop at the hospital on Wednesdays. When I was ready to leave that morning, they were up in the bedroom with the door closed and I didn’t know what to do. Robert was down in the basement, of course. It felt wrong to just leave the house without saying goodbye to them, but I had always respected their privacy and never disturbed them when they were in their room, and I wasn’t sure that I should start now. But then I decided I certainly had the right to say goodbye to them in my own house, so I went upstairs and knocked on their door.
There was a muffled kind of sound from inside and what sounded like a grunt and I jumped back, shocked. Had I disturbed them in a private, intimate moment? Oh, how horrible, I thought: this is why you should never knock on closed doors. God only knows what’s going on inside. They were a young couple after all.
But then after a moment, Mr. Djukanovic opened the door and he had all his clothes on and looked perfectly normal, and I could see Mrs. Djukanovic sitting on the bed near the window, and I realized I was just being silly.
“Oh, Mr. Djukanovic,” I said. “I’m off to the hospital but I just wanted to say goodbye and good luck with your move.”
“The hospital?” he asked. “What is wrong?”
“Oh, no, no. Everything is fine. I volunteer there, in the hospitality shop, on Wednesdays. I probably just get in everyone’s way, but it makes me feel like I’m contributing something.”
I wasn’t sure how well Mr. Djukanovic understood any of this—I doubted he knew about hospitality shops; they seemed so quaint and old-fashioned—but he appeared as though he did.
“Thank you for everything you have done for us,” he said. “There is no way for us to thank you.”
The inherent contradiction in these two statements baffled me for a moment; it seemed so odd that one person would say them both in the same breath. But I suppose life is full of contradictions like this, and I admired Mr. Djukanovic for embracing them (so to speak).
“There is no need to thank us,” I said. “Both Mr. Evarts and I were very happy to have you stay with us.”
“You are both too kind,” said Mr. Djukanovic.
I didn’t think Robert had been very kind at all, but I let that pass. I suppose in some large abstract way his willingness to let them stay with us was kind, even if he wasn’t a very good sport about it. “Well, goodbye,” I said, “and good luck. If there’s anything you need, or anything we can do, please let us know.”
“You have done too much already,” said Mr. Djukanovic.
I felt we could go on and on in this ping-pongy way, so in an effort to put an end to it all, I said, “Goodbye Mrs. Djukanovic.”
She had been gazing fixedly out the window, ignoring the two of us, but when I spoke to her, she looked over at me. And then she did something very upsetting, very odd. She stood up and walked over to us and took my hand in both of hers and then knelt on the floor and pressed her forehead against my hand. She kissed my hand and then she stood up.
Of course I was terribly, terribly flustered. I don’t know what I said, but I remember shaking Mr. Djukanovic’s hand and then shaking Mrs. Djukanovic’s hand and then rushing down and into the garage and driving to the hospital in a sort of a daze.
River rats, I thought, the words coming back to me from when I was a little girl, and I felt ashamed.
A few days after the Djukanovics left, Reverend Judy paid us a visit. She rang the doorbell one morning at about eleven. Unfortunately it was a warm day and I had the front door open, and we saw each other through the storm door, so I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t home, and then I thought, What’s wrong with you? You have no reason to hide from Reverend Judy.
She brought me a pound cake, and even though it was wrapped in tinfoil and had what looked like a recycled Christmas bow on it, I could tell it was store-bought, and I thought it was a little duplicitous of Reverend Judy to try to pass off an Entenmann’s pound cake for homemade, but then I realized she made a dozen of these calls a day and she’d be up all night baking pound cakes, and besides it’s the thought that counts. So I made a pot of coffee and we sat in the living room and drank coffee and ate pound cake and Reverend Judy chatted about various irrelevant things, like she was considering adopting another little Chinese baby and should dogs be allowed off their leashes in Jaycee Park even if a child had been bitten, and I forget what all else because I was thinking about the Djukanovics, and I knew we would talk about them sooner or later.
I’d heard nothing from them since they’d moved into their trailer. Of course I hadn’t. Why would I think that I would? It wasn’t as if we were friends or anything, or there was any reason for them to stay in touch with me. I was just a stranger who’d helped them a little bit. But for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I suppose that just goes to show how little I have to think about. So I wasn’t really paying attention to Reverend Judy, and then I heard her say Alice. Alice!
“What?” I said.
“I know you’ve had your share of sadness. Of tragedy,” Reverend Judy said.
I looked at her. Another thing I didn’t like about Reverend Judy was the way she dressed. She looked fine in church on Sundays, she wore traditional vestments, different colors at different times of the ecclesiastical calendar (which seemed a bit pagan to me, like dressing up for Halloween), but when she wasn’t in church she dressed very casually, very sporty, and you’d never know she was a minister, you might think she was an aerobics instructor or a golf pro. She was wearing a T-shirt that said JESUS IS MY MVP and some black stretchy pants that didn’t come all the way down to her ankles and expensive-looking sneakers. For some reason nothing bothers me more than these sneakers people wear as if they’re all going to run the Olympic marathon instead of cross the street. I know this is all very superficial and it doesn’t matter what people wear, what matters is who they are inside, but I think a minister should look a certain way. Otherwise it’s just all too confusing.
“Alice?” I said.
“It is a terrible thing to lose one’s child,” said Reverend Judy. “And one’s grandchild as well.”
This didn’t seem to be the kind of statement one should either agree or disagree with, so I said nothing. I thought it was interesting she didn’t mention Charlie, but I suppose that under the circumstances, even a minister wouldn’t think it was terrible to lose Charlie.
“I’m sure you are still grieving,” said Reverend Judy.
I realized that I felt very far away from Reverend Judy, far away from my living room, and it was a lovely feeling, like being at the movies, where everything that matters doesn’t really exist.
“Does your faith sustain you?” asked Reverend Judy.
I wanted to say no, but that felt like I was blaming my faith, as if faith should sustain you. And of course that assumed I had some faith to blame. It’s not that I don’t have faith, I do, I think I do, I mean I think it’s a little pointless to be alive without faith, but I knew it was not a faith like Reverend Judy’s. It wasn’t a faith that did anything, really. But I think that’s the point of faith, for if you felt that your faith did something, of course you would believe, it would be obvious, it would not be faith.
“I read about what happened in the newspapers while I was still in Lansing,” said Reverend Judy. I didn’t know she had worked in Lansing before she came here. “But I forgot about it.”
“I’m sure you have too many tragedies to keep track of them all,” I said.
“When I met with Pastor Abbott, he told me about what had happened to your family, and then I remembered, I remembered reading about the terrible tragedy here in Hurlock. It was remiss of me not to visit you sooner.”
“Well, I know how busy you are,” I said. “Always racing here and there.” I looked down at her sneakers.
“He had lost his job, your son-in-law, wasn’t that it? And couldn’t find another?”
“He was pretending he had a new job,” I said. “Going I don’t know where every day.” No one ever found out what Charlie did all of those days, where he went when he drove away in the morning. He was very clever though, he never drove more than thirty miles, which was the distance to and from Manatus, where he was supposedly working.
“And so they lost their house?” Reverend Judy asked.
“It was about to be foreclosed. We didn’t know. About losing the house, I mean. We could have helped them, if we had known.”
The Best American Short Stories 2014 Page 9
